Guidance for Wellcome Trust Centres and Africa and Asia Programmes

These are the processes you need to follow to support your researchers and track their compliance with our open access policy.

This guidance sets out:

what we expect in relation to our open access mandate

how our funding should be acknowledged by authors

how the open access funds we provide should be used.

We consider that the costs of publishing papers, monographs and book chapters in open access form are a legitimate research expense.

Wellcome Trust Centres in the UK and the Africa and Asia Programmesshould use the open access block grant to meet open access costs.

The Malawi Programme should use the block grant funding provided to Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. For open access costs relating to monographs and book chapters, contact openaccess@wellcome.ac.uk.

The open access mandate

Our open access mandate applies to any original peer-reviewed research paper, scholarly monograph and book chapter in which Wellcome Trust funding has contributed to the research described.

Specifically, it applies to all papers, monographs and book chapters:

reporting research that has been funded in whole or in part through a Wellcome grant to the Centre or programme, or through their core award (during the award or after the funding period has ended)

on which a Wellcome Trust Investigator Award holder, Wellcome Trust Fellow or any other individual in receipt of salary support from the Wellcome Trust appears as a co-author during the period of their award (this applies even where the specific research project is not funded by Wellcome)

based on research conducted at the Centre or programme supported through the core award but which has itself been supported by one or more other funders.

Research done elsewhere

If researchers based at the Centre or programme have contributed to research conducted elsewhere, Wellcome-funded co-authors should ensure their Wellcome funding is cited in line with our acknowledgement guidance.

The Centre or programme should ensure that the provision of data, materials or technical assistance to external users is acknowledged in papers in line with best practice.

Such papers would only fall under our open access mandate where a Wellcome-funded researcher at the Centre or programme appears as a co-author.

Meeting open access publication costs

Costs associated with open access publication should be split proportionately between the funders of the research in line with their relative contributions, as agreed by the paper’s authors.

Where Wellcome has been the clear lead funder on a piece of research conducted at a Centre or programme, then we will meet the full costs of open access publication.

Where there is no mechanism to claim costs from the other funders concerned, then you can use Wellcome funding to cover these costs.

Where a researcher based at a Centre or programme appears as a co-author on a paper resulting from research that has been led by other institutions and primarily funded by others, then we would expect the main funders of the research to meet the majority of any open access costs.

Where such funds are not available, Wellcome funding may be used to help ensure these papers are available in open access form.

Funds provided should be proportionate to the Centre or programme’s contribution to the research. We would only expect to pay the full cost of open access publication for such papers in exceptional circumstances.

To determine whether a journal has a compliant paid open access option, please use Sherpa FACT.

For queries relating to the open access option provided for monographs and book chapters, please email openaccess@wellcome.ac.uk.

More information

We believe that Centres and programmes are best placed to judge their relative contribution to a particular piece of research.

When you submit your publication lists and annual reports, please indicate any publications that you judge fall outside our open access policy.